In Theaters: While We’re Young

First Baumbach I genuinely liked

Film

Main Plot Points:

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are Josh and Cornelia Srebnick, happily married middle-aged members of New York’s creative class. They tried to start a family and were unable to – and have decided they’re okay with that. But as Josh labors over the umpteenth edit of his cerebral new film, it’s plain that he has hit a dry patch and that something is still missing.

Enter Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a free-spirited young couple, who are spontaneous and untethered, ready to drop everything in pursuit of their next passion – retro board games one day, acquiring a pet chicken the next. For Josh, it’s as if a door has opened back to his youth – or a youth he wishes he once had.

It’s not long before the restless forty-somethings, Josh and Cornelia, throw aside friends their own age – including Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz in a sly supporting role – to trail after these young hipsters who seem so plugged in, so uninhibited, so Brooklyn cool. “Before we met,” Josh admits to Jamie, “the only two feelings I had left were wistful and disdainful.” But is this new inspiration enough to sustain collaboration and friendship with a couple twenty years their junior?

What We Thought:

I haven’t really liked Noah Baumbach’s films in the past, but I actually quite liked While We’re Young. Maybe it’s his most mainstream or something or maybe it’s the first film I could relate to, who knows?

Ben Stiller plays a struggling filmmaker (hey me too!) who is at the point in life when all your friends are married with kids (hey me too again!). He’s trying to finish a documentary, keep his marriage going and then he meets Adam Driver.

Let me just say, I hate hipsters. I hate hipsters as much as they hate things others like. Adam Driver plays a New York hipster in this and he’s quite funny. He watches VHS tapes, listens to vinyl, all the standard hipster crap. But it’s funny opposite Stiller and Naomi Watts who are your standard couple of today into the latest and greatest. Stiller even has a funny line when looking at Driver’s collection of things, he says something like, “This is all stuff I had once and threw away.”

Director Noah Baumbach did a Q&A after the film and said there wasn’t a message he was trying to put out with this movie, but I think there is. He takes shots at Millenials and how they video everything, how they are lazy and want everything right away. I agree with that whether he wanted to say that or not.

I really liked the relationship between Stiller and Watts as well. Their marriage seemed believable. Both were grounded characters, you understood where they were coming from and why they were together. They were well written.

I liked the Adam Driver/Amanda Seyfried relationship as well. As much as I can’t stand those types of people, I enjoyed them because I could laugh at them and their nonsense. I don’t like the show Girls, but the move I see of Driver outside the show, the more I like. He plays such a pretentious D-bag in this film and I loved it.

While We’re Young is smart and for the first time, a relatable film from Baumbach. I laughed and was entertained throughout. There’s a twist that I won’t even talk about and the movie says a lot even if it wasn’t supposed to. Just a genuinely good film.